It was a voice from the grave, one that had sounded in her head every night as she was going to bed. Clark Kent was alive, and on the other end of the line.
“Hello,” he said again.
He was going to hang up…Lois was sure of it. She could feel her chest tightening, and tears come to her eyes. She opened her mouth to speak, and to her horror, she discovered that nothing came out.
She coughed a little.
“Lana, is that you?” he asked, lowering his voice.
Lana?
“Um, no.” Lois said.
Lana? She didn’t remember him ever mentioning a Lana.
“Can I help you?”
His voice was polite, but there wasn’t a hint of recognition. Not that there would be. He didn’t know her, had never met her. She was a stranger to him.
For a moment she was tempted to hang up. It passed.
She cleared her throat. “My name is Lois Lane.” Her talent for improvisation hadn’t deserted her. “I’m a senior at Metropolis High school, and I have a school report to write for my journalism class. I’m supposed to do a profile on a college athlete.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to get something on someone local?” Clark’s voice sounded suspicious, not at all like the open and trusting man she’d remembered. “And it’s sort of weird that you have an assignment over the holiday.”
“I’m actually trying to get an internship with the Daily Planet,” Lois said, which had the advantage of being true. “Getting some on the job experience before I get into college. My journalism teacher has a little pull with the editor there, so if I can show him that I have potential, I just may get to spend my next semester getting coffee for real reporters.”
“The Planet’s a great paper,” Clark admitted. “I’ve always sort of wanted to work there myself. I’d think it’d be a tough program to get into.”
“I’m one of the top three applicants out of six hundred.”
“It still doesn’t explain why you’d want to talk to me,” Clark said. “How did you get my number anyway?”
“I ran into your Aunt Opal the other day,” Lois said.
In the days after Clark’s death, she’d called Martha. She’d talked to her more than she’d ever talked to her own mother. They’d shared their pain, and Lois had always been eager to hear Martha’s stories about Clark’s childhood, his family. If Martha had seemed reserved about some things, Lois understood. It wasn’t as if she’d been his wife, or anyone special in his life.
She could have been. It had broken her heart the day Martha had confirmed what Clark had told her on that last evening. He’d loved her, and she’d thrown it all away. She’d seen the hurt in his eyes when she’d asked to see Superman.
She’d been a fool.
Lois continued with her story. “She bragged about you for quite a while. Gave me your number.”
She heard Clark muttering for a moment. Aunt Opal was a known busybody.
“So what do you want to know?”
“What’s it like, playing in college.” It was a stupid question, and nothing Lois really wanted to know, but it was all she could think of at the moment.
“It’s a lot like high school. The players are better, and the stadiums are bigger,” Clark said, “But really, the game is the game.”
“I hear you are quite gifted.” Lois said. “Uh, from Opal.”
Clark’s voice took on that odd note again, the one Lois had sometimes heard in Martha’s voice. “I get by. My parents aren’t rich, and the scholarship really makes it a lot easier for them. Without it, I guess I’d just about have to give up eating.”
“So you don’t want to be a professional ball player?” Lois asked. “I thought that was every college player’s dream.”
“I don’t have any illusions about my talents. I wouldn’t fit into a professional team, and besides, I want more from my life.”
“Oh?” Lois asked.
“I want to make a difference. Bad things happen to people every day, and it just kills me sometimes that nobody does anything about it. That’s why I’m going into journalism. If you really want to change the world, you can go into politics or journalism.”
“And politics costs too much.”
“I don’t think I could make those kinds of compromises,” Clark said.
Lois heard the sounds of Martha calling from the background.
“Listen, do you think we could continue this later?” she hesitated, her mind racing. “I’m going to be in Smallville this week sometime. Maybe we could meet up and talk.”
“I’m going back to Wichita after New Year’s day,” Clark said. “But if you catch me before then, sure, why not?”
“You don’t know how much this means to me.” Lois said.
She was going to see him.
*********************
She had less than two hundred dollars.
Lois had forgotten what it was like to be a cash-starved teenager. She’d been used to the privileges of being a professional- being able to buy what she wanted when she wanted it. At this point in her life she didn’t even have her own car. When she needed to drive somewhere, she had to borrow her father’s vehicle. He was a doctor, and yet somehow his experiments always seemed to eat up all the money, leaving little for anything else. That had been another source of contention between them, one that had ended with Lois looking for her own sources of money.
She already had the internship. It was going to be tough to go back to working at the bottom, but if that was what she was going to have to do, that was what she was going to have to do. In the meantime, that left her with the problem of being short of cash.
Her grandmother loved her, but lived on a fixed income. Lucy spent her money even faster than Lois had. Her parents would want to know what the money was for. Her friends were just as cash strapped as she was.
Lois stared at the kitchen table, her bowl of soggy whole wheat cereal sitting forgotten as she felt a sudden wave of depression. She’d traveled across time, just to be stymied by the lack of a few hundred dollars.
Her father dropped a section of the paper, and Lois reached for it dispiritedly. Maybe she’d have to get a job, hold off on going to Smallville for a while until she earned enough to…
She stiffened as she noticed an article in the paper, then felt a surge of excitement.
She knew exactly what she was going to do.
******************
Lois stepped off the bus grimacing in disgust. She hadn’t remembered the distinctive smell of urine, but then, she’d always avoided taking mass transportation other than taxis.
She couldn’t afford the expense of one now. She’d raided the couch for enough spare change to make it here and back.
She glanced around, then set off at a quick walk. All the money she owned in the world was hidden in her pockets. The last thing she needed was to be mugged.
It was a three block walk, and Lois had time to think about what she was doing. Her memory seemed pretty clear, but there was always the chance that she was thinking of a different event, one that happened later.
Clearly she had to go for it. Memorable events like these were few and far between. She wouldn’t have another one for almost a year, and she couldn’t wait that long.
Finally she came to a nondescript door. She knocked impatiently.
A familiar face appeared as the door opened. Still rail thin, his face was rounder than when she’d last seen it. A flash of memory, and Lois’s expression softened.
“I’m sorry to hear about your mother. “
Bobbie Bigmouth had gone to Clark’s funeral, and it had surprised Lois how much it had meant to her that he’d been there.
He wasn’t Bobbie Bigmouth now, of course. His compulsive eating hadn’t started until after his mothers death. Oddly, the more he ate, the thinner he’d gotten. Now he was just Robert Doherty, a small time money runner who was not that much older than Lois.
“Thanks,” he said, one hand holding the door shut.
“What can I do for you?” Bobbie glanced nervously up and down the street and didn’t look her in the eyes.
“Is Louie around?” Lois asked.
“You coming for your dad?” Bobbie asked quietly. “I didn’t think he was going to…”
“I’m coming for me.” Lois hesitated, then said, “It’s business.”
Bobbie nodded, then opened the door wide enough for her to slip through.
He made her sit in the lobby while he went for Louie. Lois could hear the sound of pool cues hitting balls in the other room.
After what seemed an interminable length of time, Louie stepped into the room. Lois blinked. Louie looked as though he’d lost a couple of chins. His skin was tighter, and she could really see the effects that 13 years had made on his face.
“What can I do for you?” Louie smiled. He’d always treated her like a favorite niece.
“I know you know guys,” Lois said. “I want to place a bet.”
The smile dropped from Louie’s face. “You placing one for your father? Anything I should know about?”
Lois shook her head. “My father’s not even involved with this one. I want to place a bet on the Flannigan- Rodriguez fight.”
Louie relaxed. “So you want to make some easy money. You won’t make much. Flannigan is a palooka.”
Lois remembered the fight vividly. She’d gone to it with her father. Things hadn’t gone the way anyone expected.
“I’m betting on a knockout for the third round.” she said. Lois pulled out the wad of mismatched bills. “I have three hundred dollars here.”
Her original two hundred and another hundred after selling her entire collection of seventies music albums to Lucy. Thankfully, Lucy’s Christmas money hadn’t slipped out of her grasp yet. Lois knew for certain that she wouldn’t have much time for music over the next few years. By the time she did, she’d get everything as CD’s. She’d also given away her whole collection of leg warmers and colored shoe laces.
“Well, the odds of Rodriguez knocking Flannigan out in the third might make things a little more even, but…”
“Flannigan’s going to knock Rodriguez out,” Lois said. “That’s the bet I want to make. Flannigan knocks Rodriguez out in the third round.”
Louie stared at her for a moment. “Are you crazy?”
Lois shrugged. “What kind of odds would I get for something like that.”
“Thirty to one.” Louie said. “It’s a suckers bet. Nobody would do it.”
“If I’m wrong, I lose three hundred bucks and have to flip burgers a little earlier. If I’m right…well, I’ve been wanting a set of wheels, and it doesn’t look like dad is going to help me out.”
Louie frowned. “You’re a little young to be gambling.”
“When did you ever let a little thing like the law stop you?” Lois gave him her brightest smile.
Louie grimaced and held his hand out for the money.
“Don’t do anything for my own good, like not actually placing the bet. I need to learn my lesson.” Lois grinned.
Louie shook his head.
********************
The sound of the head hitting the canvas was sweet music to Lois’s ears. While everyone around her was staring with jaws dropped as the pasty, lanky figure which had been receiving a heavy beating for the last two rounds suddenly staggered around with his arms held about his head.
Louie was across the ring from her and stared at her with narrowed eyes.
Lois grinned at him unrepentently.
She had the money she needed. She was one step closer to Smallville.
